


Hubble Bay

by kentucka



Category: Pitch Black (2000)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Pre-Canon, Prison, Rape/Non-con References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-05
Updated: 2010-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-25 17:20:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/272837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kentucka/pseuds/kentucka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riddick has just begun building his reputation as an escape artist from SLAM prisons, when Johns gets too close and he wakes up in a Hubble Bay cell. Riddick soon realizes that in order to break out, he needs one hell of a plan, which <i>he</i> doesn't have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hubble Bay

**Author's Note:**

> Setting: Placed between the events of the [animated webcomic](http://www.pitchblack.com/blackbox/slamcity.html) (in which Riddick is transported to SLAM Ursa Luna, gets his eyes shined, escapes, and Johns is contracted to bring Riddick in), and the events of Pitch Black. The verse of the story lives in blissful ignorance of [Chronicles of Riddick (2004)](http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Chronicles%20of%20Riddick%20\(2004\)/works).

The moment still sung sweetly in his chest. The pain of it carried with him, renewed with every steel-capped combat boot that connected with his body. Johns had managed once again to take his freedom away, but this time Riddick had made sure that the mercenary paid an equally high price.

Another kick at the back of his neck, deliberately trying to break it, yet never quite succeeding. His mind flirted with unconsciousness, but his instincts wouldn’t let go, kept protecting his front, curled into a tight ball of muscle and bone.

“Welcome to Hubble Bay,” one of the guards mocked him. “I hope you enjoy your stay.”

And with that, a boot came down on Riddick’s foot, breaking a good two or three bones with a faint crunching sound, before his vision finally grayed out.

*

  
_3 days before, Abden Star System_  


He knew that it was a trap as soon as he opened the door, smelled the leather of boots, belts and holsters, the oil and gunpowder. Another heartbeat, and he’d counted three men breathing, scattered across the simply furnished motel room. One to the left, one to the right and one hiding behind to the door.

He ducked, rolled into the room, when a fourth man’s shot tore through the air next to his ear. Johns. The merc had stood an arm’s length away, held his breath and aimed for the heart. Probably would have missed just that one inch Riddick would have needed to survive, so Johns could collect the doubled bounty. The fucker was getting better every time.

It might be Johns’ lucky day, but there was no way Riddick would let that bastard cash his paycheck so easily. A quick turn to the right, and he had a good grip of the rifle, pointing it at the man in the opposite corner. The merc’s face was hilarious when he realized that he’d just shot his own partner’s head off.

Riddick twisted around, coming to a stop behind the still-shocked man, and used him as a shield against the continuing fire from Johns. The lifeless body fell from him, and Riddick bent low as it went down, grabbing hold of the rifle with his right hand, and slipping his knife out of his boot with his left. A twist of his shoulder, and the gun was aimed at the man by the door, putting bullets into his thigh and right side, while the knife flew across the room and embedded itself in Johns’ right biceps with a precision that could have been deadly, quick and almost painless, if Riddick hadn’t long ago sworn that Johns’ demise would be anything but.

The startled yell, the clutter of metal on the cheap hardwood floor was Riddick’s soundtrack as he crossed the room and rounded the bastard. Left hand wrapped around Johns’ throat, right foot kicking into the back of Johns’ knee, his mortal enemy went down. Mercilessly, Riddick twisted the knife a little as he pulled it out, and cut off Johns’ air supply until nothing more than a chocked gurgle was left of the anguished cry.

By his chin, Riddick held Johns up, made sure that the gun on the floor stayed outside of the merc’s reach. The knife traced Johns’ throat as a promise, and apart from the pained tremors, the man stayed perfectly still. Johns was just about as much con as Riddick was; this wasn’t his first retrieval, and it certainly wasn’t his first near-death situation. He was too cool and collected for his own good, too sure of himself that he’d somehow survive, and Riddick loved the idea of teaching him a lesson in humility.

Nose pressed into Johns’ neck, inhaling the man’s scent and committing it to memory, Riddick reveled in anticipation for another heartbeat. Then, without a word, he swung his arm around and drove the knife in deep, just left of the fourth lumbar, going for the abdominal aorta.

Suddenly Johns went wild, toppling over and falling face-first onto the wooden floor, and this time, nothing held back the scream, the pure fear of dying.

Riddick went down with him, felt his knife breaking, felt laughter and dominance rising warm inside his chest, and then he felt nothing at all.

*

  
_Hubble Bay Prison Facility, Present Day_  


Riddick woke up to the overwhelming smell of blood, metallic and sickly sweet, the air heavy with its humidity. It was perfectly, deadly quiet apart from his own heartbeat and breathing. After a few moments he was certain that he was alone, but his instincts told him to keep still. His fingers closed around a piece of metal, a weapon of sorts, makeshift and amateurishly unbalanced. It wasn’t his shiv, he had taken it off somebody, but it had served its purpose: he was still alive.

Lights seemed to be dim, so Riddick cautiously cracked his eyes open, and realized there was even less light than he had expected. It was utterly dark except for the very faint light that crept in at the corners of one wall. They were cracks, looking out to the hallway of the cellblock, Riddick realized, as his frazzled memory tried to piece itself back into coherency. That wall raised outwards and up like the hatch of a meat freighter ship, and the guards had dumped him on the inside of a much smaller, empty room.

He scanned the walls painted in drying and crusted blood, and sure enough, there were metal tracks clearly visible to Riddick’s enhanced eyes. Some kind of divider could be lowered down the middle of the cell, and Riddick bet that it was where the blood donor had been hiding behind when he’d been thrown in here.

Slowly, Riddick tested each muscle by tensing it first, before he tried to move. Everything ached; the guards had worked him over good in a way that Johns had never gotten the chance to. Knowing that in this kind of prison he wasn’t going to stay alone long, he didn’t bother to put weight on his right foot. He’d been unconscious often and long enough for a whole lifetime, just in the past three days, no need to add to that by prodding what was obviously broken.

With a groan, he shuffled backwards until he could lean against the blood-covered wall, not minding it since he was soaked already, anyhow. The floor was even a worse sight than the walls, thick darkened puddles of blood everywhere.

Somewhere in the left corner in front of the hatch, the hallway light illuminated the beast’s leftovers. Riddick had always known that there was an animal inside of him, purely made of instincts and driven only by its need to survive, but never had it been put to this kind of test. It had always served him well, heightening his senses and maximizing his power during a hunt, a fight. And apparently the warning of a wounded creature being twice as dangerous was true just as much for him as for any other wild animal.

Somehow, it-- _he_ had managed to charge the cellmate, take his self-made weapon off of him, and had used it to cut and stab through every major artery in the human body. Afterwards, it/he had gone a little over the top, breaking bones and ripping off limbs of its kill. Judging by the metallic taste in the back of his throat, Riddick guessed that he had even drunk a bit of the guy’s blood.

He shrugged to himself. That way, if they decided to let him run a few days without water, at least he wouldn’t dehydrate as quickly, or as badly.

*

Whirring, creaking metal, and then a loud crunch woke Riddick from his light sleep. The metal divider of the room had been lowered, and one of the previous inmate’s arms had gotten in the way. The three fingers which were still attached to the arm wriggled with the divider’s jerky movements, looking oddly like a mutilated string-puppet.

Another whirring sound, and Riddick knew by the lights suddenly filtering through that the door to the cell had been opened. Laughter and impressed whistles, one guard muttering “shit, that’s gross”, then a thump like flesh on concrete: another cellmate.

His muscles still burned from the blows he had taken, from the overexertion during the fight, and his right foot was downright unusable, but Riddick knew that he had still advantages. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t so much as really breathed, for anybody to even guess his position in the room. As soon as the hatch was closed again, it would be dark, and it would take his new cellmate a good minute to adjust. His shined eyes might gleam in the dark in a dead giveaway, but that was nothing compared to the enhanced sight they provided. And finally… Riddick tested the newly sharpened edge of the belt buckle, as well as the bone-shiv he’d made out of a splinter of the guy’s shoulder blade. Yes, he was ready.

Mindful of anything that would make a sound - the wet blood, his hands and knees as they slipped in it - he crawled closer to the metal divider that would be pulled up again as soon as the guards were done dragging the bits and pieces of his former roommate out. Well, all of him except for the arm that was stuck.

He could hear the new inmate shift, and the answering click of a semi-automatic’s safety being put off.

Slowly, still careful not to give his position away, Riddick stood up on his left foot, and both blades gripped tight in his hands, he pressed his back to the wall and peered out through the gaps between the metal plates that made up the divider. With eyes narrowed to slits so he wouldn’t be blinded as much, he watched guards out in the hallway, passing the cell and staring in at the mess he’d made.

The contrast was too stark so he couldn’t actually see anything inside his cell, but on the other side of the hallway, he could read another cell’s label. 14-3-9.

It took the guards a full ten minutes before the body parts were all moved out of the cell, and the worst of the blood had been mopped up. Riddick listened to their mumbled complaints about not being paid for cleaning duty, not nearly enough anyways, and more blabber about having lost a lot of money in a bet. Riddick couldn’t estimate his new roommate’s size, but he sure heard his low whimpers and smelt the fear, sickly sweet and acrid at the same time. Urine.

Finally, the guards cleared out, the outer wall was lowered, and with a yank that juggled the three-fingered hand, the divider rose slowly. Noiselessly, Riddick crouched again, ready to attack, and never left the new guy out of his sight, peeking through the increasing slit at the bottom. He kneeled on his right, but used his arms and all the strength in his left leg to coil away from the floor as soon as the divider was high enough. He was on the newcomer in a flash, had him knocked to the ground, the head bouncing hard on the cold, wet concrete. It left the other man dizzy enough to secure his left wrist to the ground with Riddick’s right knee, which left his broken foot free of any weight or pressure. His left foot balanced him, while his left hand pinned his opponent’s right, and Riddick’s free hand pressed the bone-shiv against the man’s throat. One move, one second, complete immobilization despite his handicap. Riddick was proud of himself.

The sudden cry of fear filled the room, bounced off its walls, and ended just as quickly. The man-- boy’s lips were moving incessantly, but he was breathing so hard that Riddick barely understood that he was begging for his life.

“Shut up,” he growled, and the boy’s jaw snapped shut.

Light hair, no way of telling if it was brown or blond and dirty, not with Riddick’s shine job. Barely growing a beard, dark lashes on tightly closed eyes, but the smell of _man_ was strong despite his youthfulness. Maybe twenty, twenty-five at the most, Riddick guessed, but how did a face like this survive at Hubble Bay? _Aw hell_ , Riddick wasn’t naïve.

Didn’t mean the boy wasn’t a threat. His chest heaved like he was in the middle of a marathon, but he breathed through his nose, lips as tight as his eyes. Riddick continued to look him over, although the guards wouldn’t have left any kind of weapon on him. Even the drawstring of his pants was missing (probably went AWOL while the guards had their fun with him). But Riddick knew how stupid guards could be, missing the obvious, and how evil, missing stuff on purpose. Had he had his body’s full capacities, he would have released the boy by now and told him to strip. But there was no way of him doing so and not revealing his weaknesses. It was a risk he couldn’t take, not yet.

“Your name.”

The boy flinched at the sound of his voice, nicking his skin on the shiv. He hissed in pain, before he could answer. “Ryan.”

“How long have you been in here?”

“Little over three months now.” Ryan swallowed hard, and Riddick eased the shiv off a little so the boy wouldn’t damage himself any further.

“Do you piss yourself often?”

That made one eye crack open.  
“Just on special occasions. You should feel honored.”

Riddick considered laughing; the boy had balls. Well, there was a reason he’d been thrown in here, and a reason he was still alive. But he shouldn’t feel too comfortable; the instinct to cleanly slice through the tender skin and harder windpipe wasn’t overcome so easily.  
“Why shouldn’t I kill you?” Riddick asked instead.

Immediately, the wry humor was wiped off Ryan’s face, and after a second of confusion, a weirdly misplaced smirk took over, suggestive and inviting.  
“I could make it worth your while.”

*

In his life, Riddick had accepted a lot of things in trade, but sex had never been one of them. It was of little use. Getting the edge off worked just as well with his right hand, without putting himself in the vulnerable position of letting somebody close to sensitive parts of his body. He’d had sex, but usually that had involved far-off planets, partners of questionable decency, and a fake identity which was low-key enough not to draw any attention. A miner’s, once, another time a wrestler’s.

In here it was close to suicide. You never knew who had slipped your piece of ass a knife and a few bucks to get rid of you for good. That boy, Ryan, he made Riddick’s neck hair stand up like a wild cat scenting a rival in the underbrush. Something was off about him. One minute he literally pissed himself in fear, the next he made cocky remarks and bold offers with a gleam in his eyes and a set of shoulders that screamed defiance despite his current position, straddled and pinned to the still-wet concrete floor.

“I don’t care about your body, boy,” Riddick growled, and pressed the shiv back in a little. Just enough to sting.

The response was immediate. “Information, then,” Ryan gasped, but Riddick couldn’t decide if the desperation in it was real.

“The only information I’m interested in is on how to get out of here. Permanence has never been one of my strong-suits.”

“Deal.”

Surprised, Riddick barked a laugh. “What, you think it’ll be that easy? Just yell ‘deal’ and I’ll let you go? Tell me one fucking thing I don’t already know about this prison, boy.” Wouldn’t be him if he didn’t know everything there was to know about the holding facilities in this galaxy as soon as he’d entered it. Well, Ursa Luna had been kind of an exception, but it was a mistake he did not make twice. He’d merely lucked out. He hadn’t been afraid to do what it had taken to get out of there.

Ryan was already counting down facts: “Cylindrical shape, three circular hallways on each floor. A hundred floors in total. We’re on the 14th…”

“… in the outermost hallway, cell number 9. I know.”

Ryan blinked up at him, and talked faster.  
“Eight elevators in total. Four in the outer ring, three in the middle, one at the center. Triple security on all of them. Voice recognition, key signal sensors, security cameras. Elevators are remote-controlled. There are no buttons to call it, no buttons to choose a floor. No stairs, no emergency ladders. Whoever gets stuck in one has to wait for a total lock-down protocol to complete, and a service technician.”

Riddick was quickly losing his patience. Hubble Bay took it serious with their maximum security. And this frustration only added to the anger he already felt towards the boy who was wasting his time. He dropped the shiv and wrapped his hand around the boy’s throat instead, felt for the racing pulse, the working adam’s apple, and leaned down a little. “Why are you telling me what does not work?”

“I’m telling you something you don’t know! That’s what you wanted,” Ryan cried. “I’ll tell you everything about this place, every fucking hole and niche and gap, every guard and inmate, their daily routines, the bribes and the punishments, but we’ll have a deal. I tell you, and you won’t kill me. And then you can try and figure out a way out of here. But you can’t kill me if you don’t. ‘Cause let me tell you right now, their security is pretty fucking _tight_.”

For a few moments, Riddick simply stared down at the boy, the rightful fear and amazing guts, apparently also a good amount of killing instinct to have survived this long. A sharp mind and lots of information that would probably take him weeks to gather on his own. Some he would never be able to acquire, because there was just no way he’d ever get into guard’s quarters, but this pretty boy, he’d suck a few guys off and they’d take him.  
“Deal.”

*

Slowly, Riddick picked up his bone-shiv again, before releasing the boy’s-- Ryan’s hands. Every move he made was deliberate, and yet while Ryan seemed to be appreciating the lack of further life-threatening behavior, Riddick’s sole reason to be so careful was to somehow not give away his injuries. He kept a fighter’s stance, poised on his right knee and inching back with his left, the shiv clutched safely in a palm he had fitted it into.  
Riddick saw the boy’s smart eyes swiftly travel up and down his body, taking everything in, and he had no false hope of having successfully hidden anything. Their eyes locked, and with a rueful smile - as if Ryan knew he’d been too sharp for his own good - the boy robbed backwards out from under Riddick.

From a safe distance, back against the opposite wall that Riddick was now leaning on, Ryan nodded to himself. “They crushed your foot. Probably broke a couple of ribs. Maybe a concussion, cracked skull. It’s a wonder your hands are still whole.”

“You really shouldn’t tell if you got another’s disadvantages all figured out.” He sure as hell didn’t care to point out all of Ryan’s lacking defenses: his normal sight, his arms’ reach due to his short build, the longish hair easily falling into his eyes and being the perfect handle, his too-slow reactions, the way he favored his right arm. He didn’t yet know about tactical skills, but suspected they were worse off than Ryan’s hand-to-hand combat. Surviving months in here, and probably several cellmates, suggested he had had at least some kind of training.

“The way I see it,” Ryan retorted, “I can’t beat you even with you already half dead. Hell, you killed The Lieutenant Romanov, who wasn’t exactly lightweight, basically in your sleep. Apart from all that… we have a deal.”

Riddick snorted to himself, grinning into the face of the first guy in four years who was to honor a deal they had. “Since you’re already bringing that back up…”

*

In quick and undecorative words, Ryan had recounted a few of the basics of everyday prison life, which all boiled down to one simple fact for Riddick: He was screwed.

He had flirted with the thought of killing the boy in order to get transferred to another cell, then overpowering the guards and fleeing, but that plan had several weaknesses. It was very unlikely that he would ever be transferred; the guards would rather put a new guy into Riddick’s cell every day. And out in the well-lit corridors, he would be blind as a bat. He would have to find a way to make the elevators work for him, because the ventilation system was built specifically _not_ to fit a human body through - barely even an arm. But the guy pressing the buttons was on the top level, unreachable without the elevators in the first place, and not easily blackmailed with the lives of inmates or personnel. Neither of them were an engineer or hacker, who might have been able to hotwire one of the elevators, or had the necessary tools handy.

Plan B, and he still wasn’t quite ready to let that one go, was a prison riot. The hardest part was _starting_ it, since the prisoners had zero contact with each other. Additionally, the drawback with riots was that they _always_ got out of hand; they were utter chaos that could not be controlled. Once it got started, one had to get the hell out of there, and so it could only ever serve as a distraction from the original plan.

Which Riddick had yet to come up with.

The other issue was that they lived on borrowed time. Those inmates who refused to play the killing game were starved to death; fucking bastards had bets running on every man that entered Hubble Bay, and seemed to profit quite well from them. Profits which they seemed reluctant to live without. Ryan’s estimate had been a week before the daily deliveries of food and water would stop.

A week had to be enough.

At least enough to squeeze all information out of the boy.

*

Ryan pissed into the bucket in the corner by the door, before settling against the wall in the opposite corner. Riddick watched him struggle with sleep, eyes drifting closed and startling back open again, for a few hours before the boy began to shake with the effort of staying awake.

The tenth time it happened, Riddick laughed harshly. “Relax. I’m not gonna kill you in your sleep.”

Slowly, the boy’s eyes focused. “And I promise I won’t try to kill you either.”

It sounded like an attempt at a joke, a bad one at that, but Riddick didn’t even smile. _Months._ There was no assessing the boy, not yet, not really. “Okay,” he nodded.

Riddick’s eyes closed and he slipped into a dreamless sleep, but the animal kept watch for any stirring of the air that might precede an attack.

*

Again, the whirring of the divider’s motors woke Riddick. He watched as Ryan, utterly disgusted, kicked the three-fingered hand into the direction of the door before it could be crushed yet again by the divider. Then, the boy sat back against his spot in the other corner. At Riddick’s raised eyebrow, he only shrugged. “That way we won’t have rotting meat right under our noses.”

Riddick hadn’t said that it hadn’t been a good idea.

Somebody mopped the floor again, probably because of the arm, and the bucket was emptied and replaced.

Then, a guard stepped up to the divider.  
“Well, well, Ryan… It amazes me again and again how you can ensnare the most ruthless killers and make them spare you. I know your cock-hungry ass is worth a lot around here, but to be honest, I had bet that Riddick would be a nut too hard to crack even for a slut like you.”

Slowly, soundlessly, Riddick crawled closer to the divider, until he sat right at the guard’s feet.

Ryan watched him curiously, but did not miss his mark in keeping the guard’s attention on him. “You’re just mad you didn’t get a taste of it yet, Michaels. Too bad they threw me back in here before you got a chance. Your coworkers sure ain’t looking out for ya.”

Rage flared in the man, Riddick could sense its heat easily, and it made Michaels stupid. He stepped even closer to the divider, trying to peer in through one of the narrow slits.  
_Perfect._  
While the guard spit some of the filthiest words Riddick heard in a long while (‘Don’t think you’re getting off easy, you motherfucker, when Riddick finally killed and dismembered you, it’s gonna be my pleasure to jerk off over your dead body.’), Riddick rose slowly. The claw-like bone-shiv was warm against his palm, its point sharp against his fingertip. A second to carefully measure the distance and anticipate the necessary movement, and then—

Two voices yelled simultaneously, one in shock and one in pain, before several others joined with angry shouting. Riddick was back against the wall, cleaning the clear, gooey _vitreous humor_ off the shiv by wiping it on the floor and his pants.

It took Ryan several minutes after the lights had gone out and the divider had risen again to regain his capability of human speech. “I cannot believe you stabbed Michaels’ eye out.”

Riddick broke a piece of bread off the loaf they had gotten, savoring it, and shrugged. “Was the fucker who crushed my foot.”

*

Interestingly enough, the whole eye-stabbing incident made Ryan warm up to him more than any truce had managed to yet. Riddick wondered if this wasn’t a twisted and backwards reaction to the recent events, but then again, who was he to judge. Oh sure, he prided himself in being able to tell how people would react in certain situations, he was a walking behavioral study, but the longer he spent in the cell, the more Riddick realized the boy resembled rather him than the rest of the universe’s population.

Injuring the enemy’s enemy certainly did not make them friends, but their respect for each other grew. Ryan may have heard of Riddick’s ruthlessness, but now he also knew of Riddick’s talent to improvise, and how his threat to gut anyone who stood in his way had to be taking seriously, even if he was caged.

And with that respect came a certain amount of trustworthiness. Ryan would feed him all the information he needed to make it out of here, because the boy believed Riddick could actually make it, and hoped he would find a way to make Riddick take him along. Maybe a well-placed blackmailing, “I’ll tell them exactly how you’d do it, and they’d catch you within a couple of minutes”, or a bribe, this time with something better to offer than just his body.

Whichever, Riddick knew Ryan would accompany him in the escape, and because Ryan knew that as well, they would find a way to leave this place behind sooner or later.  
Together.

Riddick shook his head in amusement. The beast inside him, the loner and killer, the survival artist with its live-and-let-die mentality, liked the idea of leading a pack.

*

The rather surprising prospect of a teamed effort brought up a subject Riddick usually didn’t bother asking his cellmates about (since he didn’t make it a habit to talk to corpses): getting to know each other.

“What are you in for?”

Ryan had curled up in a corner, nibbled on his bread, and watched him from under lowered eyelids. He wasn’t so spooked anymore, didn’t jump every time Riddick spoke - and Riddick still didn’t know whether those had been halted jumps backwards in fright, or forwards to attack.  
“Fraud, mostly.”

A wry smile accompanied the statement, which made Riddick return it without thought.  
“What else?”

The boy hummed in thought. “A few thefts, bar brawls,… indecent exposure, once. Took a piss against a government building. What about you?”

“I’m _mostly_ in for murder, myself.”

“Never would have guessed.” Ryan chuckled.

“Then you’re very bad at reading people.” Riddick teased back, causing Ryan to laugh loudly while thinking, _what the fuck are you joking about?_ It seemed that no matter how long he’d spent on his own, the rituals of camaraderie came naturally, and that realization was sobering. Depending on the boy for a way out of here was bad enough, but forming emotional attachment? _Wanting_ them to escape together? That would only lead to unnecessary risks. No, Riddick’s own survival had to remain his primary goal, and if he was able to string the boy along… fine. So he still needed that plan, and to formulate one, he still needed to find out what Ryan was actually good in.  
“How did you survive this long in here?”

All laughter stopped dead.

*

For a full hour, Ryan had stayed silent and continued eating the bread. He’d even gotten up and reached for the water, but never uttered a word.

Riddick waited for him to make up his mind, but eventually turned back to the tasks at hand and poked at the multiple fractures in his right foot. Bones this small were harder to realign, so he checked and rechecked his work to make sure his shifting about hadn’t messed them up again. Well, as far as his sense of touch alone could tell him.

When Riddick was satisfied with his foot, he felt his ribs which hurt a lot less than the day before, and the cut on his forehead which had already started to heal. He realized that while the guards had worked him over quite nicely, they hadn’t done much serious damage apart from the first metatarsal bone.

Glancing up he noted that Ryan was now watching him with morbid curiosity, so he grinned evilly and cracked his fingers. Grimacing, Ryan turned away, but even with his shine-job Riddick could see the amusement dancing in those eyes.

“You never asked,” Ryan suddenly blurted, and hesitated mid-sentence as if his courage had left him again. Riddick watched silently as the boy shook his head, battling with himself.  
“You never asked how I knew how long I’d been in here.”

Riddick cocked his head to the side, but the quiet seemed like Ryan actually waited for an answer. “I had a theory.”

Ryan was staring at his feet. Riddick knew that his eyes flashed in the dim slivers of light filtering in, and Ryan only tried to avoid them.

“When I got here, they tossed me into the cell of some poor old bastard. Fuck knows what he’s done so wrong to land in HB. He couldn’t kill me, and I… just wouldn’t kill him. Then they starved us, and he refused to even drink the bit of water they did give us. After a week I snapped his neck, before he could die of dehydration.

“The guards got me outta the cell, then. Passed me around for a few days. Afterwards I couldn’t walk anymore because of a cracked rib, and they threw me into a cell with another young, new guy. Told me not to kill him because they were only storing him there temporarily, he was meant to go Below as a prize. They just had to determine the winner first.

“It gave me time to heal, before they grabbed both of us again. Meek was transferred down, and I was back on level one, being fucked six ways to Sunday. Whenever it got too bad they threw me into a cell, but usually with those I could easily overpower. You being my new cellmate must mean they got tired of me.” Ryan grinned wryly.

Riddick nodded. Empathy really wasn’t his thing, but he understood very clearly.  
“You survived,” he pointed out. “You bought yourself time, you gathered information. And now we’ll use that to get outta here.”

Ever since when had he turned into the optimist?

*

  
_Decades ago, on board the_ Wokou

Riddick sat in a storage container, stealing away on a pirate freighter.  
The _Wokou_ \- he’d seen the badly disguised name plate on the ship’s rump where it had docked, and had figured that it was probably his best route off a badge-infested piece of rock. These pirates had the guts to restack on a police-guarded planet; they were unlikely to be stopped by anyone with their engines and weaponry at the ready. But most importantly, and Riddick was loath to admit that even to himself: Their crates were the only ones not being checked by docking station security, unlike all the other merchant and travel vessels’ cargo, to avoid unpleasant surprises with stowaways or explosives.

The crew would have killed him instantaneously, had they found him. So whenever he heard the cargo bay doors opening, he hid inside an empty container towards the back, where all the empty boxes sat. As far as hiding places went, it was perfect. Unless after a heist, no one would think of looking there. Later he would creep out again and break into other containers, looking for food. But as it soon turned out, it had been a really poor choice for a place to survive. The combined weight of five more containers placed right in front of the door of _his_ place was too much to push aside.

When Riddick realized what the crew was doing, he did a quick calculation of his chances: how long he could go without water and food, compared to how fast he would die when he gave himself up, and the likelihood of the pirates raiding a ship within the next 72 hours.

By the time the bay doors closed behind the last crew member again, he’d decided that he had 72 hours to figure out how to escape the container, and get off the ship - afterwards not coming up with a plan was a moot point, anyhow.

*

It had been a close call in the end, 80 hours since his last pull of water from the rations container, the red one with the long scratch in its paint along the side. The ship’s engines suddenly whined, pushed to their limits, and boots clunked heavily on the metal grate floor beyond the bay’s doors, rhythmically like running with a purpose, with efficiency. Even in the steel container Riddick could smell the adrenaline, feel the crew’s anticipation. The scent of greed was in the air.

The cargo bay doors opened and fell shut again, and Riddick could hear that it was a single person, detached to ready the containers for their new wealth. The shifting of crates and boxes began immediately, and Riddick started knocking against the metal walls surrounding him softly.

It was easy to know when the man outside had heard him: The sounds stopped, like the man was straining to listen and pinpoint the source. More screeches of metal against concrete, and the bright light blinded him after more than three days of total darkness. Both he and the pirate blinked once, twice, before the man swore loudly and reached for him.

Riddick sprung into action. His blade sliced off those fingers closing in on his neck, and the man yanked his hand back and howled. While his lower half was unprotected, Riddick plunged his knife hard into the general area of the main artery on his thigh, and turned it slightly while pulling it back out. Quickly, for fear that another one of those howls might be heard, he stuffed the cut-off fingers down the pirate’s throat, and slashed it for good measure.

The man collapsed in a puddle, and Riddick watched him bleed to death. Eyes widening in pain and burning with the futile promise of revenge grew distant and dull, while the rest of the pirates did the exact same thing to their victims.

*

Riddick pressed in closer to the airlock which now connected the ships, and which the pirates used to carry anything valuable through onto the Wokou. He did not have much time left before the dead pirate in the cargo bay would be found.

Another man rounded the corner in the cargo bay’s direction, and Riddick quickly stole through the airlock, hiding behind the next door he found. _Five, four, three--_

Loud yelling and an alarm ripped through the Wokou, and at once the pirates let their loot fall, racing back onto their own ship. When they were out of sight, Riddick casually stepped back to the airlock and engaged the manual lock, sealing off the raided vessel.  
Guessing the direction, he headed for the bow of the ship (the Honeyed Apple, a panel read, and wasn’t this the most undignified name a space ship could have?) and looked over the controls. It was an old fashioned joy-stick handle between the pilot’s legs, and several levers conveniently labeled in fading colors, but engraved in metal.

Riddick looked into the same dull eyes of the dead pilot, half-turned in his seat as if he had tried to outmaneuver the pirates until the last second, but was surprised by a bullet between his eyes. There was little blood compared to Riddick’s most recent kill.  
He shouldered the pilot, dumped him behind the captain’s chair, and sat.

He grabbed the joystick, pushed the button that read Engine Start, and smirked at the first officer next to him, who was in pretty much the same position as the pilot had been just a minute ago.  
“Better buckle in, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.”

*

  
_Hubble Bay Prison Facility, Present Day_  


Riddick had stretched out on the floor, cradling his right foot by hooking it over his left, and contemplated the layout of Hubble Bay Prison.

It was basically a huge cylinder, floating in orbit over Hubble Bay, a stark and unfriendly planet which was barely inhabited. It did create the resources for the SLAM, but it was military run and no option to escape to, even if stowed away in the belly of a freighter. The thorough scans nowadays would pick up on their life signs easily, and they would be toast before their feet touched earth.

The space station was divided into a hundred levels, and the top ones housed the control center and the guards’ quarters. Ryan had seen his fair share of top level places, but even he hadn’t caught a glimpse of the docking stations - the security was simply too tight.

The lower levels held the prisoners. Each level was made up of three rings of cells, alternating with three rings of walkways. Connection walkways were lain out in a cross, but they were sealed off during lockdown. The elevators allowing people to move between levels were remote-controlled, and the shafts had no emergency ladders.

The cells themselves were equipped with hundreds of kilos worth of concrete walls, a hatch door that could only be operated from the outside, a metal divider that had to be down before the door would open, and a couple of infrared cameras creating a heat signature picture of the cell.

“Step One,” he said into the silence, and startled Ryan a little, “is getting out of the cell. Step Two will be getting off the station.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Ryan answered sarcastically. “Is that what you’ve been pondering for two hours now?”

Riddick growled, and Ryan shut up.

*

A deep sense of discomfort woke Riddick. It was starkly cold; he could see his breath in the air and Ryan shook visibly where he lay curled up. He moved to stand on his left foot, flexed every muscle in his body, trying to warm up.

“Winter Night.” Ryan was barely understandable through his chattering teeth. “They call it Winter Night, when they turn the temp down to almost freezing. Literally.”

Riddick nodded to himself. He went down on hands and knees, and crawled towards Ryan. “Have you lived through this before?”

“N--No.”

When Riddick reached the boy, he stretched out on the floor and wrapped himself around Ryan’s back. Riddick felt him tense, but after a few moments of warmth developing between them, Ryan gradually relaxed into the full-body embrace.

Ryan’s longer hair tickled Riddick’s nose to the point of annoyance, Ryan’s breathing so loud and close kept Riddick on edge, and his scent slowly caused Riddick’s brain chemistry to get the wrong idea. Still, he held the boy and did not move an inch. They were each others best hope to get out of here, and this was the thought Riddick caged the beast with. No hurting the boy. He still needed him.

“There is a plan,” Ryan suddenly whispered.

Riddick had grabbed Ryan’s annoying hair and jerked his head around until they were nose to nose before he could check himself. _No hurting the boy? Yeah, right._  
“Say that again.”

Ryan bit back a whimper, but Riddick saw his throat working.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t say anything sooner. I just had to be sure.”

“You think I’m less inclined to kill you when you keep that kind of thing from me?” Riddick yanked on the hair again, and this time Ryan _did_ groan in pain.

“Self preservation. I had to make sure you really would take me with you. You understand that, right?” Ryan’s eyes pleaded with him, and Riddick felt the power run through him, heating his spine and feeding his hard-on. Ryan’s voice rose with panic. “I’m telling you now, aren’t I? And it’s not too late. We can?”

Riddick had clapped a hand over Ryan’s mouth. He’d gotten the point.  
He released Ryan’s hair, and wrapped himself back around Ryan fully.  
“Tell me everything, boy. Then we’ll see.”

*

Riddick leaned casually against the side wall, letting his left foot bear all the weight, and turned towards Ryan who sat leaning against the door. To the thermal cameras, they should look as if they were focused on each other and deep in conversation.

The Winter Night had turned into a Spring Day, as they were slowly getting back to more regular room temperatures.

“Do you see anything?” Ryan asked.

Riddick swept his enhanced sight up and down the metal bars, but apart from the occasional rivet that secured them to the wall, he couldn’t see any irregularities. The wall was a dark violet and the rivets pink, while the edges of the metal gleamed almost white as they reflected the sparse light.

Riddick shook his head.

“Alright, it’s gotta be on this side if it’s not on the other. Probably right above the ground?”

Riddick took his time shifting around, until he sat as well and could take a good, subtle look at the last inches of the tracks. Rivet after pink rivet, his gaze slid down, until about two inches above the ground, something green and convex about the size of a pin head stopped him.  
“That’s it?”

“What does it look like?” Suddenly Ryan’s voice was excited, and nervous.

“Ridiculously small,” was Riddick’s grumbling answer. Damned electronics, he preferred the man-tall engines of ships, the heavy, greasy parts one could bang against without breaking them.

“Is it a hole? Something that locks into place?”

“No, it’s a little raised.”

“Perfect,” Ryan whispered before mumbling something that might have been a thank-you to some deity, which Riddick really was glad not to have understood. Oh sure, he wasn’t a believer himself, but he couldn’t care less about other people’s religion. He just didn’t need yet another reminder just what bad of a plan the boy had come up with.

Riddick grumbled impatiently. “So I found the fucking sensor. When will the guards come back?”

Ryan closed his eyes, and seemed to calculate the hours that had passed. After a few minutes he frowned.  
“Do you hear anything?”

Sliding on his behind, Riddick crossed the sticky-red border that marked where the divider came down, into the smeared almost-clean half of the cell that the guards had wiped down. Leaning against the door next to Ryan, he strained his ears.

Two sets of boots down the corridor, probably ten cells away. In one cell in the middle ring, the one right across the walkway, a fist beat away at a face. The closest elevator opened and let out another couple of guards, dragging something or someone between them. Riddick reported all this to Ryan, who smiled.

“Gotta love your senses, man. We have a couple of hours.”

*

As the time drew close, Riddick could feel his adrenaline spiking. Thankfully he was used to lying in ambush, waiting for the perfect time to strike, or he’d be a jittery bundle of nerves like Ryan. Not that Ryan wasn’t trying to hide it.

He heard the cell to their right opening, and the muffled voices of the guards promising their neighbor some fresh meat this week.

“C’mon, help me up,” Riddick ordered.  
He took Ryan’s hand and pulled himself up, careful not to overbalance and risk having to step onto his broken foot. Together, they hobbled into the back half of the cell.  
“Your feet hurt?” Riddick asked, as he noticed that this was the first time he saw Ryan actually walking.

“It’s been worse. A few weeks back they cut my soles because I tried to make a run for a door. Funny walking’s more habit now than necessity.”

Riddick nodded. He’d seen the scars, but they were healed so he hadn’t thought of them as a problem.  
“Think you’ll be able to handle the divider? It’s heavy.”

“Think you’ll be able to handle the guards? Your foot’s still broken.” Ryan countered. When Riddick only smirked, planning his attack, Ryan added, “just give me the damned shiv already.”

For a moment Riddick looked down at the boy, trying to decide if he really could trust him that much. But Ryan only stared back unflinchingly, so he pressed the flat of the belt-buckle blade against the boy’s chest.

Not a moment too soon did they take their spots, as the divider rattled in its tracks and began its descent.

*

It didn’t take much to stop the divider. Ryan barely acknowledged the pressure on his shoulder, while the hand behind his back pressed the metal blade against the sensor. Riddick heard the two guards handing out the food shuffling over to their cell, and waited for his signal.

At the small click of a lock disengaging and the growing gap between door and floor, he rolled through beneath the divider. He used his momentum to go across the front half of the cell to the door, which was now up far enough. He switched into a one-legged crouch, and leaped upwards. In their surprise, the guards could not hold off Riddick’s weight, and all three went down hard.

His bone-shiv slid into the right guard’s throat so easily that Riddick barely noticed it. And while the right guard was already dying, knocked unconscious and choking on his own blood, all of Riddick’s attention was focused on the remaining man, around whose neck he had closed his left hand tightly.

Riddick’s eyes were screwed shut against the harsh lightening in the corridor. In a hand-to-hand combat like this he was at a dangerous disadvantage, and had to rely on the blurry shapes he still could recognize behind his eyelids. Large, strong hands wound around Riddick’s wrists, trying to twist them away, batted at his chest and even went for his throat. Riddick caught one of them, but he knew the guards had guns. It had been merely basic instinct that had caused the man beneath him to grip the hand choking him, rather than pulling out his weapon and shooting Riddick.

Only a breath later, Riddick could feel the body jerking around, trying with the left to free the gun from its holster at the right hip. Riddick had no free hand left which he could’ve used to slice the guard open. His left foot was busy holding him up, and his right was still unusable. He couldn’t afford to let the guard go or give him more time to get at his gun. _Shit._

Suddenly, the guard jerked up hard, and made a noise that sounded distinctly like he was screaming without air. For a few seconds, he bucked and twisted, until the head dropped back and all fight went out of him.

Riddick turned slowly, and behind his eyelids, he could see the silhouette of Ryan standing with his hands and head hanging, heard him breathing like he’d fought a cage match. He released the guard and the arm dropped like the dead meat it was, then checked the body over for where Ryan had struck him. On the upper thigh he felt the telltale wetness, and smiled.

*

“Tag, you’re it,” Riddick laughed when he drove his knife deep into the skull of a guard that had just come around the corner.

He hobbled over to where Ryan kneeled next to the guard he’d shot with one of the guns he’d liberated from the guard’s many dead colleagues.

“Amazing, you’re like a kid with a new toy,” Ryan grinned. “No offense, but it’s creepy.”

“None taken. I’m getting the hang of the indistinct shapes, so this is exhilarating.” Riddick breathed in slow and deep through his nose, catching the mixed scents of blood, cleaning detergents, gunpowder, and Ryan’s sweat. He savored it, knowing it would soon come to an end. “How long are we gonna play this? The more of theirs we kill, the more tempted they will be to kill us right back.”

“The Army should be surrounding us as we speak.”

Suddenly, ten heavily armored men appeared at each side of the corridor. Wires flew across the distance, tiny electrodes sticking onto both Riddick’s and Ryan’s skin. Before either man could react, they went down with a loud _zap_.

*

As Riddick slowly regained consciousness, he felt his arms and waist tied, and something cold and slick wound itself around his broken foot.

He squinted hard, desperate for an idea of where he was.  
The walls were an unblemished white, but the room was still a cell, with mobile medical appliances along the wall. Some guy in a white coat was holding his right foot gently, wrapping a bandage drenched in wet plaster round and round.  
In front of the closed door, a guard stood with his rifle at the ready. Riddick thought he recognized him from Ryan’s descriptions. Lieutenant Baker: hot temper, slow mind, and a good shot.

“Why are you helping me?” Riddick asked. He’d expected to wake up in another cell, to more steel-toed boots, or simply not at all. Not to have them put a cast on his foot.

“Helping you to help yourself,” Baker grinned. “Director decided that since we can’t keep you up here, you’ll go Below and earn us all some _real_ money.”

“The fuck I’m doing,” Riddick snarled back. No way would he participate in their gladiator games.

“We’ll see,” Baker said, and motioned to White Coat to set Riddick a shot, which had his vision fading again.

*

Riddick came to in a dark room.

It was stifling and hot, as if the air hadn’t cycled through the station’s filtering system in years. The room was bare, but as he moved around he noticed a crack in the floor, and walls, and ceiling. It quickly dawned on him that one part of the room was actually the elevator, and the other had to be a few square-meters of sealed off corridor, acting as a kind of airlock to the rest of the level.

Riddick was Below.

This was where Ryan’s sources failed him. You couldn’t walk around asking questions about Below, he’d said, without raising suspicion. The truth about the lowest ten levels of Hubble Bay were shrouded in secrecy, mystic tales, and wild speculation. Few ever returned, and none felt like sharing anecdotes.

It was said to be anarchy.  
Leftovers of a prison riot nobody ever cared to put down completely.  
Men fought each other to the blood, or to the death, whichever the bet was. The fights were the inmates’ trade, receiving food, cloth, or whichever they desired in return. Ryan had doubted that only the guards placed bets. He believed in a vast conspiracy, transmitting the fights live over a private video channel like pro-sport boxing matches for the rich and bored. That was all Ryan had overheard on the upper levels though, and as to how the inmates were organized, whether everyone fended for themselves or they had gangs watching their backs, whether they lived in luxury or starved, whether they had lights and toilets and running water… Well. Those questions were all soon to be answered.

Carefully, Riddick shifted his weight onto his broken foot to test the cast. Satisfied that it held, and that the pain was much more bearable than in the past four days, he stepped forward. The heavy steel doors of the elevator slid close, and the cabin moved away with a low hum.

A few seconds later, the proven hatch door started to rise.

*

  
_Decades ago, Unnamed Star System_  


Twenty.  
He’d celebrated, walked into a bar and drunk more alcohol than he usually allowed himself. Smirked at a women probably ten years his senior - or maybe that was just her looks. She seemed intrigued, brought over her drink and sat at his table. They hadn’t spoken a word yet, but he knew he’d wake up the next day in bed with her. It wasn’t hard to guess her interest, and since there were no sneers directed at him from any of the other patrons in the bar, he knew he had no competition.

She asked what he was celebrating.

“My twentieth,” he’d replied, and let the cheap distillate burn his throat.

He never told her that he was celebrating his twentieth kill.  
And that, as far as he knew, he was around the age of 16.

*

  
_Hubble Bay Prison Facility, Present Day_  


Riddick crouched in front of the door, next to the left wall. Defensive.  
He was on dangerous territory. All the important variables of a fight were unknown to him: Number of his enemies, their strength, firepower, strategy, formation, position, weaknesses, objectives, and where cover, obstacles or makeshift weapons were to be found in the field. He only knew that he was easily outnumbered or overpowered, their biggest strength would be Riddick’s broken foot, and they were sure to have some kind of weapons.

The ever-growing space between door and floor fed him information. He listened to his own heartbeat, then tuned it out to listen for other’s breathing. A faint, flickering glow was the only light in the hall, but not from candles. The light came and went in irregular intervals, electrical light bulbs with loose contacts. Electricity. Cables.

Two sets of boots came into view close to the door, the rough sound of rope against skin, at least five other people shifting, breathing too hard for someone standing still, preparing for attack.  
But there were no safeties being clicked off, no springs squeaking as triggers were pulled, no metal brushing against the fabric of clothing or the leather of holsters.

The door swung outwards slowly, pulled up to the ceiling. This and Riddick’s position ensured that he’d be able to partially see and calculate tactics against his two closest opponents long before they could ever see him. Their faces were still hidden by the door, but everything else…

The floor was littered with papers and chunks of plastic, broken cog wheels and a perforated pipe. The guys’ shoes were old and worn, but Riddick recognized the standard issue guard boots, complete with steel capped toes, after having experienced them so up-close and personally. The pants weren’t off much better, dirty and ripped, but they too had once been part of a guard’s uniform.

Maybe Ryan’s conspiracy theories weren’t so far off after all.

But if the boy was right, those men were fighters. To the death.

*

Riddick charged forward, rushing at the two men from the side, taking them completely by surprise. His shoulder connected with the side of one, his momentum caused both to stumble. The moment was enough for Riddick to grab the rope, wrap it round the neck of the man holding it, and pull sharply.

Riddick veered around, using the strangled man’s body as a shield against the second man’s hunting knife -- a fine instrument, stabbing into flesh and ripping up intestines with the jagged blade as it went.

One down, six to go.

A step back, a twist to the side, and he pushed his human shield at the knife-wielding man. While the body was caught and carelessly thrown to the side, Riddick picked up the pipe he’d spotted previously. He watched the man advance, saw the move in his shoulder before it was executed, and easily dodged the thrust. Instead, Riddick caught the knife’s handle with his left, and used all his might to smash the attacker’s face with the short pipe in his right hand. When the man howled in pain and let go of the knife, Riddick took it over and in the blink of an eye, had it sunk horizontally between the ribs, straight through the heart.

Two down —

Riddick’s eyes settled on the scared faces of the remaining five, who’d huddled closer together rather than running at him. They were younger, less built, and clothed in what they’d probably been wearing when they had been imprisoned. Those were not fighters. Those were the aspiring students who’d just shit their pants.  
Riddick snarled, took a step forwards, and they high-tailed it outta there.

— none to go.

Enjoying his victory, Riddick turned full circle to survey the damage he’d done. The hatch door had reached its highest point against the ceiling, and was now whirring closed again. Blood had sprayed everywhere but Riddick doubted he’d been the one to christen these walls. Hell, he doubted his hands would ever get clean again from all the blood and brain matter that had accumulated under his fingernails from the cell mate and six guards he’d killed Above.

He heard a soft, rattling cough, and bent down to the man who had his own rope wrapped around his neck, and bled profusely from his abdomen. Riddick was amazed that he was still alive.

“Derek,” the man gasped, and curled up, pressing his hands to the ugly wound.

Riddick smiled. A codex? A concept of honor? He wouldn’t have expected it.  
“Riddick,” he answered by way of introduction. “And that guy?” He indicated with his head at the body that had already given up its fight to survive.

“An asshole.”

The joke caught Riddick by surprise, and he barked a laugh that resonated in the empty hallways.  
“Is there a doctor that can fix you?”

Derek wheezed, shook his head, obviously beyond the capability to speak now that the pain grew more intense with the shock and adrenaline wearing off.

Riddick knelt down next to Derek’s face.  
“Nice to meet you, Derek,” he said sincerely, and with a practiced move of his hands, snapped Derek’s neck.

*

Four hundred and eighty nine.  
But who’s counting.

*

Slowly, Riddick explored the hallway and the empty cells surrounding the central elevator that had brought him here. It seemed that the airlock room around the elevator doors had been built in a hurry. The walls were rather thin, by far not as sturdy as the cells’, and they had already taken quite a few hits.

Other walls had been mounted to seal off the connection walkways to the outer rings, but they had been taken down by force. Their remains still lay strewn across the floor as sand and rocks of concrete. No wonder the guards didn’t trust the airlock anymore, and would rather block an elevator for an undetermined amount of time than accompany the convicts down here to drop them off.

But while everything was dark and empty around him, he heard people shuffling about their ways, talking in hushed tones.

Riddick would have very much liked to ignore them, avoid them even, as he usually did other humans. They spelled trouble, attacking him, or trying to turn him over to some merc for a share of the bounty. But this time, Riddick had to play nice to get to his goal: the lowest level.

Cursing Ryan and his stupid plan that had gotten him in here in the first place, Riddick followed the sounds, carefully glancing into each cell before moving past. 91-2-7 read the label of one cell in the middle ring, in which the noise was the loudest. Riddick peered in, and was mildly surprised.

A good 10 inches of steel-enforced concrete floor had been broken through, and Riddick could only marvel at the resourcefulness of the inmates during the riot. What the hell had they used to take it down? Presumably, they had done the same to the remaining 8 floors of their little kingdom. But what made them stop from going up even further?

Actually, Riddick had a pretty good idea. As long as the ones Below didn’t try to take over again, they could live their pathetic little lives free in the confinement of ten floors, rather than a single cell. Otherwise the guards would storm the place and shoot everything that moved. It was a tradeoff, a compromise. Riddick understood that others would go for it, although he never would accept a prison, no matter its size.

Riddick descended the ladder, gripping Asshole’s pretty hunting knife in one hand, and keeping Derek’s rope wrapped around his other arm. They were his weapons, and his trophies.

As soon as he’d set his cast down on the first step, a girl sitting on the level below ran away screaming, causing a tumult that only stilled when people started recognizing him. A half-circle formed outside the cell, and murmurs could be heard of _five seconds_ and _killed them both_ and _the Broken One_.

Broken One? Riddick looked down at his cast. Well, _Killer_ was probably not the most distinct description for someone being thrown down here.

Larger men, obviously fighters like Derek and Asshole had been, appeared in the crowd, pushing the others to safety behind their backs. The blatantly obvious social structure amused Riddick. So here were the army and the workforce… Where was the nobility?

*

Five men escorted him. Two up front guiding him, three watching his every step from behind.

Riddick thought about killing them. Thought about having to take on five men at once, without any backup, with a broken foot and no more weapons than a knife and some rope. Thought about there being many more gladiators where these five came from. Thought about having to hide within ten levels of a space station, where nobody owed him, and everybody was used to the plain morals of surviving.

Riddick considered joining them. Taking up a position in their army ranks, protecting the workers from the bloodthirsty renegade convicts which had to be in here, somewhere. Fighting the occasional contest to win them some goods, earn the guards some money.

Riddick shrugged to himself; neither option was that appealing.

*

His escort stopped in front of a cell in which two men sparred, hand to hand combat in the flurry of movement that came with the fighting style of the Haboru, equally effective and irritating. Riddick had fought a Haboru clan member once, and remembered well how hard it was to distinguish between aborted distractions and carried-through attacks.

“Tamas,” the man taking point called out, and the sparring partners paused mid-attack to look over. “The new guy.”

The smaller man of the two, the one with shoulder-length hair and wrinkles in his face, nodded, and touched his right fists to his sparring partner’s in greeting before he came over. The fighters hovered to both sides, protective of their leader, while Tamas stood an arm’s length away, unafraid.

“I’m not going to stay,” Riddick said.

“Living down here is hard without the earnings of victorious fights,” Tamas put in. “Outside of my reach, there is no peaceful sleep to be found.”

Riddick kept his face carefully blank, sure that his annoyance didn’t show. He’d guessed as much. But he was alone again, no pack, no one to lead. He did not like being led.

“I will fight for you, in exchange for the things I need. But I’m going down,” Riddick answered, letting no room for arguments.

Tamas considered him for a moment, and nodded at Riddick’s trophies. “You have killed Frank and Derek. Both had fights scheduled to secure our food supply. Win those, and we have a deal, Broken One.”

*

Riddick danced.

A step to the side, a 180-degree-spin, a couple of steps around the other, a hand in the air, a grip to the neck, a stab in the gut.

He won.

Carrying a ratty bag full of supplies, he walked away.

*

Level 100 of Hubble Bay was truly a dark place, in every sense of the word. Electricity was nonexistent, Tamas’s group used up all the wattage in the upper levels. Riddick kept a storm lamp which provided all the light his shined eyes required.

The others down there were mad. Bloodlust and hunger were their only drives, and while they had tried to get at Riddick’s stuff in the first week, the nicely stocked corpses in his corridor scared the rest of them away ever since. When it didn’t, Riddick added to the pile.

Weeks went by. Every day he would climb up ten ladders, going from one cell 2-7 to the next, fighting for his meals and tools, and returning into the darkness as soon as possible.

While his opponents got bigger, and the combats started to be to-the-death rather than to-the-blood, Riddick knew that Tamas owed him greatly. The guards, or whoever else was betting on the gladiator games, loved him. He knew that would change if he kept winning and bored them, but for now, his continued fights earned the group much more than Riddick ever asked for in return. Just the way he needed it to be.

Because the day came that he collected it all at once.

*

Riddick had just stepped outside 92-2-7, when he heard the cheers and laughter. Tamas’ voice boomed over it all: “This is a little present from our benefactors upstairs.”

Hearing more clapping and hollers, Riddick started running through the corridor, and down the connection hallway leading to the middle ring, barely dodging the few people going about their daily business. He only stopped when he stood right in front of the small stage Tamas’ and the prize were on.

The boy was covered in blood, dirt and bruises. One eye was swollen shut, the other open barely more than a slit and showing only the white as if he would fall into unconsciousness any second. The sole reason he was still upright was Tamas’ strong grip of his shoulders.

Ryan. Finally.

“Glad you could join us, Riddick, but I’m afraid somebody else already called first dibs on this little beauty.”

Riddick focused on Tamas, whose smile instantly died on his lips.

“I’m sorry, Riddick, but our agreement with you does not include the prizes. We give you what you need to survive down there, that’s all.”

Riddick slowly shook his head, and out of the corner of his eyes, noted the ring of fighters gathering around him. “You give me what I request! And you know as well as I do that whatever you gave me these weeks didn’t even come close to what you earned through me.”

Tamas nodded slowly, and tilted his head to the side thoughtfully. “Be that as it may, why this one? You’ve certainly never cared about any of the other prizes. Why is this golden boy so special?”

Tamas was a general at heart, a strategist and quick-witted mind. He knew no pride, valued nothing other than his life, and took each step with consideration. The whole stage setup was part of Tamas’ job: a crowd-pleaser needed every now and then to keep his subjects happy. Riddick knew to tread carefully around an opponent like him.

“We shared a cell,” Riddick replied, staying as close to the truth as possible, “and I wasn’t done with him yet. I will fight for him. I will fight you, Tamas, if that’s what it takes. But that boy is responsible for my being down here, and I will finish teaching him those lessons I promised him,” he spat, putting all the disgust he felt at his situation at large into his voice to make it convincible.

Riddick didn’t want to fight against Tamas’ Haboru style, but he counted on the fact that the leader had no intention of keeping Ryan for himself. Tamas and he, they were too alike in that regard, and Riddick would bet his shiv that Tamas didn’t let anyone near who he didn’t trust with his life. Probably nobody at all. The unknown variable was Tamas’ curiosity to find out why Riddick was so keen on doing something apparently uncharacteristic.

However, either Tamas had bought Riddick’s little tale of revenge, or he didn’t really care all that much about the reasons and had only offered token resistance for the benefit of the audience. He raised his voice towards his men. “Does anyone want to challenge Riddick for this prize?”

Riddick turned around, but stepped to the side so he still had Tamas in his periphery vision. He let his gaze travel from face to face, and lazily flipped his bone-blade in his hand once, to signal his readiness. The only answer was deadly silence.

When it was clear that nobody would step forward, Tamas pushed Ryan away so Riddick caught and shouldered him.

“Thank you,” Riddick addressed Tamas with a court nod and an evil smile. “I’ll make sure his screams won’t bother you.”

*

  
_Decades ago, Opco Star System_  


He followed the stink of alcohol and cigars down street after street. He kept a careful distance, stayed in the shadows and made sure he made no sound, although it was very obvious the bastard up ahead wouldn’t even notice if he knocked him over.

Another turn left, into a dark alley littered with waste that made the man trip and curse every other step. The abandoned buildings left and right barely had any windows, and there was too little light for anybody to make out a face. It was the perfect opportunity. Noiselessly, Riddick caught up.

The shard of glass presented itself as a weapon, ideally ironic that garbage would kill this scum, piece of a bottle of the same brand of cheap spirit he reeked of. Riddick smiled, grabbed the bastard’s right arm, and spun him around.

Bloodshot eyes went wide in surprise, and a second later even wider in pain. Only then, Riddick felt the blood drip down the glass and over his hand, and was mildly surprised himself that he’d already stabbed the man. There had been no conscious thought about the movement past a body’s resistance, slicing skin and innards open.

Riddick leaned a bit closer to the dying man, who was too drunk to fight for more than a last breath.  
“Yeah, you fucker. Didn’t think I’d remember you, hm? Die and rot, scumbag.”

*

  
_Hubble Bay Prison Facility, Present Day_  


The descent was slow. Ryan hung precariously over Riddick’s shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and he tried not to jostle the hurt boy too much.

Riddick told himself sternly that he never worried, but he was… aware of the fact that Ryan’s condition made them both very vulnerable to the monsters of the lower levels. There hadn’t been an attack or breach of perimeter in twelve days, but they’d smell the fresh meat and tirelessly circle the cell Riddick had chosen as his base.

With the floor of Level 100 beneath his feet, he took the shortest route to his cell in the outer ring, his storm lamp chasing away the shadows and the beings hiding in them. Already he could see the first two trailing along, scenting the blood and sweat of wounded prey. Riddick stepped over the decaying bodies littering the area around his base and petted Ryan’s thigh when the boy moaned in disgust at the stench. Fortunately, their tail didn’t dare to venture any closer yet.

Carefully, he lowered Ryan to a makeshift bed, which consisted of every piece of cloth he’d found or taken off the dead bodies around here. Ryan’s good eye was open and focused although he remained silent; apparently he’d recovered a little and had a better grip on his consciousness. Riddick grinned at him, and when the boy didn’t even flinch, Riddick almost thought he’d lost his edge. But he told himself that for one, Ryan was already used to him, and two, the boy had probably lived through some things these past weeks which made death sound like a good idea.

“Let’s check you through,” Riddick rumbled, loathing that he had to explain himself to avoid startling the youth. He liked keeping people around him off-kilter; remaining unpredictable was an advantage.

To avoid jarring any injuries, he helped Ryan undress. To his eyes, skin was pink that almost shone with its brightness, but bleeding cuts were black and bruises a violet smudge. Neck, shoulders, chest and arms, they were dull and dark throughout; it was obvious that Ryan had been well worked over continuously, for a long time.

Riddick let his fingers trace each rib, pressing softly, but Ryan never cried out and he didn’t feel any fracture. At least something positive, then.

One set of bruises around Ryan’s neck stood out, a clear handprint, and just out of curiosity Riddick set his fingers onto the prints to estimate the stranger’s size. Suddenly Ryan’s chest heaved, like a hiccup, and he turned his face away, eyes screwed shut and hands clenching in fists next to him. Riddick let go immediately. “Sorry,” he mumbled, grappling with himself to force out words that would justify his actions. “He was big,” was all he could come up with.

Ryan’s fists slowly uncurled. “Going-away present,” he whispered. “Talking still hurts.”

Riddick nodded to himself, then proceeded with his inspection of Ryan’s body. If Ryan blushed when Riddick’s eyes and hands smoothed over his belly, hips and legs to feel for internal damage, Riddick couldn’t distinguish it from the contusions on his face.

Last, he prodded each arm from shoulder to fingertips, and stopped at the left forearm where he felt a slight bump. “Your radius was broken.”

“Years ago,” was Ryan’s whispered response. “Trying to learn how to ride a horse.”

“You had a horse?” Riddick asked, surprised. Old Earth animals were rare, except on the Nutrition Supply planets, which every modern solar system liked to keep to produce its food.

Ryan squinted at him and grinned, but it quickly turned sour when the motion pulled the cut on his right cheekbone. “In an amusement park. Passing through on the run.”

Setting the topic aside as non-critical information, Riddick wondered if the boy had a concussion. It was hard to tell since one of his eyes was swollen shut. Riddick reached for Ryan’s head and ignored the flinch he caused, threading his fingers through the blond hair ( _Tamas had called him a golden boy, it had to be blond_ ), searching for swellings.  
“Do you still have a headache; are you dizzy?”

Ryan turned his head minutely in the negative.

“How’s your ass?”

The boy drew a breath, and another, preparing to argue or laugh it off. But a few heartbeats later he deflated. “I have no idea.” And then he turned onto his stomach.

*

Riddick treated it like all the other open wounds, carefully applying a healing salve he’d put a man to his knees for. Same man he’d killed two weeks later for an axe.

Now the bruised and raped boy was on all fours before him, knees spread wide, and the tremors running through him told Riddick just how much the position was fucking with Ryan’s head. He tried to be as quick, thorough and gentle as he could, but by the time he finished Ryan was shaking.

“I’m done,” he announced, and watched Ryan right himself gingerly.

The boy was still shaking and his fists were balled, but now Riddick could read the emotion off of Ryan’s face: barely contained rage. Wanting to put up a fight like he had done over the past weeks, never letting them think he’d give it up easily. Making them work for it.

Riddick remembered this, _after_. How it had felt surreal that it should all be over suddenly, like a dream that the next punch would wake you out of. The way one couldn’t let one’s guard down to accept help.

Ryan took his time, but he managed to get dressed by himself. Only a couple of hours of peace already left him more aware and responsive, and less like he would slip into a coma any second.

Riddick watched the boy’s movements for an indication of an internal injury his prodding hadn’t found, while he set up the usual traps. Hair-thin nylon strings across the doorway would jostle empty food cans. It was simple, but the few seconds were all the warning Riddick needed since his foot had healed. He positioned the storm lamp by the entrance to illuminate any intruder, while the boy and he would sleep in the shadows.

He stretched out on the floor next to the bed of clothes Ryan had curled up on, and growled contentedly. He had his pack back.

*

A good six hours later, Riddick woke slowly. The candle inside the storm lamp was flickering and soon going to die, so he had to replace it. Ryan was still curled up on the cloth-bed, facing Riddick, but apparently relaxed and dreamless. It was probably the best Ryan could wish for at the moment: undisturbed blackness. No flashes of bad memories, no involuntary movement that would trigger the pain and jerk him out of his sleep.

Never wanting impatience to be associated with his name, Riddick decided to give the boy a couple more hours and patrol the hallway along his cell. He had no idea how much time they had left, and he’d acquired all the necessary tools ages ago, had even been able to scrounge up some extras like that freaking healing salve. There was nothing left for him to do before Ryan woke up again, marked the spot with an X, and told Riddick to get it done by… well, an hour? Three days? Two months? He didn’t know.

From the start, the fact that all this information would stay with the boy, that Riddick’s chance at escape hung by the silken thread of Ryan’s survival of the guards’ revenge, had never sat well with his control issues. But this was Ryan’s plan; he’d done his part and was now relying just as badly on Riddick to do the heavy lifting and keep them both safe down here.

Riddick stopped just outside the cell’s door, pacing only a few steps in either direction. He couldn’t bring himself to turn his back on it even for a second, fearing that one of the lowlifes might take the opportunity to get to the boy while Riddick was too far away.

He busied himself with calculations of their food supply. It was planned for two weeks, but if they stretched it, maybe if Riddick accepted another fight for some more, they could make it last for a month. Candles would only hold for a week. But the worst would be to break a tool. Pick and shovel weren’t the easiest to get down here. The ones Riddick had been able to win were probably veterans of the original uprising, looking as if they’d broken through several layers of concrete already.

A soft sound from the shadows of the cell caught Riddick’s attention, and he almost sighed in relief that the boy was finally up and the next phase of their plan could be put into action.

*

“What date is it?” Ryan’s voice was stronger, and the more extensive bruises had started to fade, while a few localized ones only now darkened. The swelling of his eye had receded, but to Riddick he looked like a Dalmatian with a black ring around it. Rich people held this almost extinct race of dogs as pets, indulging them until they became bossy, thinking themselves as the alpha male -- and somehow the analogy held too true for Riddick’s liking.

“The eighteenth.” Riddick bit back on the question circling in his mind. Let the pet think it was in charge for a while. Let it spit out the information in its own time.

“I was able to send my message two days after they watched that sports game. That was the fourth. So, sixth, and I said two weeks, that makes it…”

“The twentieth, two days from now. From the sounds of it the drops are always made during the second day shift. We have thirty-six hours,” Riddick estimated.

“My head hurts,” Ryan declared, and when Riddick only raised an eyebrow saying _‘You’ve probably got a concussion, what did you expect?’_ he added: “From the numbers. Jeez. You’ve got no sense of humor.”

Riddick bent down to the stash of muesli bars, dug out one declaring to be laced with vitamins, and threw it at the boy’s chest. “I do, but it only seems to show when someone’s bleeding on the edge of my shiv.”

Ryan shook his head and laughed despite himself, maybe in disbelief, but proving obviously, in Riddick’s opinion, that he did indeed know how to joke. And he hadn’t even killed anybody today.

*

Thirty-six hours were not much. So he’d wolfed down a couple of muesli bars himself, grabbed the pick-axe, and went to work.

_“It’s a bad plan. What if you don’t get back soon enough?”  
“Give me two months. They’ll tire of me faster than you’d think. They’ve never kept me more than four weeks, and although it’ll be my last round, I still doubt they’d want to keep me longer than eight.”_

It wasn’t hard, figuring out where he had to break through. He’d chosen this cell because it was where he could hear the hum of the rotating blades the loudest, and while it made for lousy sleep, it also meant that the wall was the thinnest on this side of the shaft. Pressing his ear to the wall, he’d quickly found that they should have at least three feet of space between the floor and the bottom of the shredder.

_“It’s still an incredibly bad plan. You don’t know where the last trash shredder is. If we don’t fit through beneath it, we can’t break it without getting a lot of unwanted attention.”_  
“The most detailed plans I found showed enough space for us to move through. If not… we’ll figure something out.”  
“Oh, your sudden optimism is great, but you’ll just maneuver us into a worse position than we’re already in.”  
“After a couple of failed attempts to break out, you’d agree with me that there is no position worse than this.”

He took the axe, and swung it as hard as he could. It only left a little dent, but it was a start. He swung it again, and again, until the pick drove in far enough that Riddick had trouble pulling it back out.

_“How can you be so sure that we’ll have tools?”  
“They’ve… watched a fight once, while I was up there. I saw some people in the back with shovels and knives and stuff.”_

The first bits of concrete broke away, brittle trickling down from the ever growing bump. He wondered how long the wooden handle of the axe would hold out. Otherwise he’d have to keep going with the spatula, a thin, weak sheet of metal in comparison.

_“And there’s air in the shaft?”_  
“Yes. There’s an airlock at the bottom of the shaft. I’m more concerned about the container, in which they create a vacuum before it’s released from the station. Until it’s fully aboard the freighter…”  
“Great. Have I mentioned that your plan’s just going to kill us?”

The hole was a good three inches deep when the axe’s tip broke. Just a bit of it splintered, but from then on it cracked more than the wall, so Riddick turned the flat side forward. Another two hours, and the hit which broke through to the shaft also snapped the wooden handle.

Immediately, a nauseating smell of rotting meat and stale air filled the cell. Riddick wrinkled his nose in disgust. “This--”

Ryan cut him off quickly. “This plan sucks, I know. I never claimed it isn’t risky, I just said it’ll get us outta here.”

Riddick conceded a point. Sure, he’d kinda liked the fights, the way he’d gotten exercise and training with the kind of people he rarely managed to find out there (fighters, killers, survivors), but the circumstances had taken a lot of the fun out of it.

“You should rest for a bit. You’ve been at it for hours now,” Ryan noted, got up gingerly, and took the broken pick away from him.

*

It didn't take long for the first of the creatures to take an interest in the noise coming from their cell. Ryan was hammering against the edges of the hole, trying to widen it from fist-size to the point where they would be able to crawl through.

Riddick heard a shuffling outside, a thump as bodies were moved from the pile when someone climbed over it. Riddick was up and at the door between one unconscious thought and the next. Stringy black hair on a stain-dark head pushed through the opening. Riddick was in no mood to kid around, not when they were little more than a day away from their freedom. With a forceful shove sideways, the head bounced off the edge of the wall, temple-first, cracked a little, and the whole body sunk to the floor without ever making a sound. A second later Ryan turned around, took in the unconscious guy and Riddick standing over him, and swore. "Shit, I never even noticed you move."

Riddick grinned a little, knowing, feeling that it turned a bit maniacal. He crouched and grabbed the guy’s head, which oozed blood from one ear, and snapped his neck. The boy just grimaced and went back to taking the wall apart, a pebble at a time.

*

They had approximately twelve hours left, and had managed to widen the hole enough for Ryan's shoulders to fit through. But they were both worn out and needed sleep, if they were to stay alert enough to make it to the freighter alive.

Same as before, they curled up in the shadows while the storm lamp illuminated the entrance to their cell, which had a curtain of barely visible threads hanging over it. Ryan again took the cloth-bed, but this time Riddick saw no reason not to share the comfort. "If you don't want me suffocating you, I strongly suggest you scoot over."

Ryan blinked up at him in the eternal darkness of Level 100, but rolled to his side obediently. Riddick spooned his back so he was still free enough to quickly jump up and get the upper hand on anyone who might try to disturb them. He lay comfortably on the soft, worn clothes, already warmed by the boy’s body heat, and enjoyed being able to burrow down into his makeshift bed again. Ryan on the other hand was tense, but Riddick didn't give a flying fuck, they just needed some rest. And the more refreshing it was, the better their chances for their escape.

*

A soft scraping woke him. At first Riddick thought that one of the creatures tried their luck again while they were asleep, but he quickly realized that the noise came from his bedmate. The boy twisted his hands in sleep. Then he became even more animated, arms flailing and snarling at invisible men to just get it over with. Riddick quickly caught both arms and trapped them with one of his own. Ryan's struggle suddenly turned earnest, boxing, scratching, kicking and trying to turn his head to bite Riddick's face.

"Shit," Riddick swore, and changed tactics. Wrapping arms and legs around the boy to hold him down securely, he whispered into his ear.  
"Shh, calm down. You’re safe. They’re all gone."

It took a long moment for Ryan’s eyes to open and focus, even longer for the panic to subside. “Thank you,” the boy finally whispered, when he had quieted down.

Acknowledging him with a nod, Riddick closed his eyes again and softened his hold from restraint to protection.

*

Riddick snapped awake. His inner clock told him that they needed to get going, so he took the spatula to the wall again. The noise quickly woke Ryan, who looked a whole lot better, even if a bit bleary. His face slowly stopped being a study in black and lilac shades.

Finally, the hole was big enough for Riddick to take a good look down the shaft. It was dark, but the little light provided by their storm lamp reflected off the metal airlock doors a few feet below. Above him roared the blades which usually cut any trash thrown down the chute (or any inmate who tried to flee through it) into a thousand little pieces.

"How long until the next drop?" Ryan asked.

"A couple hours at the most."

"We'll have to go in now, in case they're ahead of schedule," the boy stated the obvious, but that didn't mean either of them liked the idea. An hour or more to be spent in a container full of rotting waste, waiting for all air to be sucked out of it, hopefully getting onto the freighter soon enough not to suffocate? The plan might have been risky up till now, but the hardest part was yet to come. And what if they'd miscalculated the day that they'd be expected on the other side?

Riddick snarled, and again grumbled to himself when Ryan didn't shrink back from him. Fuck it, he'd fix that as soon as he'd set foot on a safe planet again.

"Okay then, after you."

"No thanks, after you," the boy shot back.

Riddick laughed, but stuck his feet through the opening. Bending back, he slid forward, trying to get into the shaft without touching the blades right above him. As he squeezed his shoulders through, his feet hit the airlock. Immediately the weight sensor triggered and the metal slid aside, so Riddick tumbled down into utter darkness rather ungracefully.

He heard Ryan chuckle briefly, before the airlock hissed shut again.

The smell was overwhelming, and Riddick fought the urge to retch. He stood waist-deep in something muddy, and the ground beneath his feet gave way slowly like quicksand. Carefully, he half-walked, half-swam to the side and turned his back.

Not three seconds later, the airlock hissed open again, briefly illuminating the container’s questionable contents, and Ryan landed in them with a splash. Another heartbeat, and the light was cut out again when the airlock creaked and closed.

“Holy fuck,” Ryan exclaimed as soon as his brain had time to register the stench. “I think the insides of my nose are peeling off.”

Riddick chuckled lowly. They swam to the walls of the container, finding tentative footing, and settled in for the wait.

*

The garbage shuttle was perfectly on time. The noise was almost unbearable, like inside one of the first private shuttles which had next to no sound isolation between its engines and the passenger cabin. Riddick knew he’d keep hearing a faint buzz for a good day at least when this was over, but escaping this hellhole certainly was worth more than a bit of tinnitus. In comparison to the shine-job without narcotics, this was a piece of cake. Never let it be said that Riddick wasn’t willing to pay the price for his freedom.

The container rattled when the ship docked to the space station, then the engine hum grew quieter and beeping and whirring could be heard instead.

Suddenly, the light was back. Something large had been thrown down the trash chute, and since the vacuum sequence hadn’t yet been initiated, the container had opened. Shit.

Quickly, Riddick reached for the boy and got him by his throat, squeezing and pulling him near enough to hiss a _Quiet!_ into his ear. Ryan flailed for a moment until the word registered, then relaxed when he realized that Riddick wasn’t going to kill him -- yet. The fact that the boy didn’t actually trust him all that much soothed the beast’s bruised ego of the past couple of days, but Riddick quickly pushed the thought aside.

Someone was in here with them. One of the monsters, most likely, who had dared venture into his base now that he was gone, found the hole, and had enough brain cells to figure out that their escape route would still work as the garbage shuttle was just arriving. Riddick knew a fight was not an option at the moment. Like his opponent he had three of his senses disabled, with the absolute darkness, the stench, and the ship’s noise rendering his eyes, nose, and ears useless. They both knew they had company, but neither would be able to find the other. The mud and liquid inside the container made quick moves next to impossible, and in a few moments they would also have no air or gravity. Riddick’s only advantage was that he knew what would happen next.

The whirring stopped; Riddick’s and Ryan’s cue to take one last, deep breath and hold the fuck on.

*

Weightlessness is a really nice concept, unless you’re deprived of oxygen, inside of a metal box with a distinct lack of handles, surrounded by shredded human remains, droppings and rotten leftover food, in close proximity to a mortal enemy -- or in Riddick’s case all of the above.

The air had wheezed out of the container within a few seconds, and with it most of the liquids. The larger particles had quickly clogged up whatever openings there had been, and then gravity had been nullified. Ryan clung to Riddick’s wrist and he to the boy’s as they floated, trying to ignore the various bits of _something_ that hit their faces or skimmed their arms.

Only another minute, before the container was safely placed on the shuttle, airlock closed, and life support restored.

A loud _clang_ had Riddick immediately tacking ‘If nothing goes wrong’ onto his last thought.

_tap tap tap press press_ \- pause - _press press press press press_ \- pause - _tap tap tap_ \- pause - _tap_ \- pause - _press tap press tap_

“30 sec,” Ryan’s fingers told him in Morse code. Riddick was a little impressed, he had counted on the boy panicking in these circumstances.

They had floated against a wall, and although it was currently hard to say which way was up or down or sideways, Riddick’s instincts told him that they were at the top of the container. He let his hand skim over the smooth surface, felt it reverberate with another impact of sorts.

_tap press press press press_ \- pause - _press press press press press_

“10,” Ryan updated with his knowledge of the machinery which picked up the garbage container every day.

If they didn’t want to break every bone in their body from the fall they would likely experience as soon as gravity was reestablished, they needed to get the fuck down. There was no mud on the floor that would buffer the crash now, since it was floating as well, and would drop much slower due to its lesser mass.

With a hard kick Riddick pushed himself away from the wall, pulling Ryan along with him. He had no way of knowing how deep the container was, and how far to the bottom they were, but in his head he kept count of the seconds. _Three, two, one..._

A sharp tug went through his body, sudden gravity taking a hold of them and although he’d been prepared for it, he almost let Ryan go. They hit the ground a heartbeat later, kicking the air out of both of them. From somewhere close Riddick heard a similar grunt, but he still couldn’t see anything. Instead he focused on shielding his face from the slick bits raining down on them, and digging themselves out of the quickly growing mountains of trash piling up around them, threatening to bury them alive.

Air sizzled back into the container, and all three of them gasped for it. Now that they were inside the shuttle, the noise was considerably less, and Riddick could easily locate the source of their breath-heaving blind passenger five or six steps to the left. With oxygen and gravity back to normal, all he needed was a smidge of light, and he’d fillet that monster in five seconds flat.

But why wait for the lights, even if it would take him three times as long without sight, fifteen seconds was still a good enough chance to take the fucker down before he could put up a proper fight.

_press press tap_ \- pause - _press press press_

“Go!” Ryan signaled him as soon as the nasty rain had stopped.

Riddick squeezed back briefly before he let go of Ryan’s hand and located his shiv in his waistband. As stealthily as possible with the squishing sounds of the container contents, Riddick crept closer to the superfluous commuter.

An arm’s length away, the other suddenly held his breath again, as if he’d noticed that Riddick was drawing near. Holding perfectly still, Riddick concentrated on anything emanating from the person before him. Skin on cloth, probably searching for his weapons. Thundering heartbeat, gearing up for a fight.

Riddick carefully placed his right foot a half-step forward, sinking in again to his knee. Not one for wasting time, he then shot forward in a snake’s strike, left hand aiming for the vulnerable neck but connecting only with a shoulder. The right slid the blade right into a soft stomach while he adjusted his left, sliding it up into place to brutally crush the windpipe. Before his prey could react, Riddick let himself fall backwards, offering no target at the usual height of attack.

The music of victory: swishes of swinging fists hitting nothing but air, rattling breath a howl of pain on the exhale.

Riddick rolled away and circled the man, going in for the kill. He could only guess the correct position, but either the third stab found just the right place, ripping a hole in the abdominal aorta, or the blood loss was already so severe that his opponent collapsed.

He poked the body, felt for a pulse, and when he was satisfied that the guy was really dead rather than playing possum, he called out to Ryan.

“I’m here,” the boy answered, and took it as his permission to start moving.

Riddick followed him to the edge of the container. “Let’s get outta here.”

“Working on it,” Ryan replied, and rapped a long and complicated rhythm on the metal wall.

Immediately the lights went on outside, painting bright slithers on the muck, and the container top whirred open letting even more light in. When Riddick squinted, Ryan considered him for a second, knowing that he could now press an important advantage. But then his gaze slid sideways to the remains of their fellow escapee.

“Lights to twenty-five percent!” he called out, and the board computer instantly obeyed the voice command.

Riddick grinned, and grinned even more when he realized that Ryan did shrink back a bit at seeing it. Seemed that all he’d needed to remember his respect of the killer was a lack of purpose for said killer. Perfect, Riddick probably wouldn’t have to actually kill anyone just to make a point.

*

A minute later, a rope ladder was let down into the container. Outside, another boy was waiting, obviously bursting with nervous energy. Riddick standing just behind Ryan did seem to scare him quite a bit, but that wasn’t enough to dampen his exalted welcome.

“Oh Ryan, thank God, I didn’t think this would ever work out. Ever since I got your message I haven’t been able to sleep, hell, you know me, I haven’t been able to sit still for five consecutive minutes…”

Riddick tuned out the rest of the babbling, especially as it became muffled when the boy all but wrapped himself around Ryan. Eventually Ryan was able to disentangle himself and, looking mildly embarrassed, he introduced the touchy-feely guy as Seth.

“He’s my parter-in-crime, so to speak. And the one who came up with the escape plan when the mercs caught up with me.”

“So you’re the one to blame for this mess?” Riddick asked with a smirk. Ryan shook his head as if to say ‘not again’, but Seth tensed all over. Tall and thin, with dark, curly hair, expressive and shy, Seth was almost the exact opposite of Ryan, and Riddick was just glad for them - and himself, by proxy - that Ryan had been the one to land himself in a SLAM. Seth wouldn’t have survived a day in there.

Ignoring him, Ryan continued. “We should let Riddick get on his way. I’m guessing you’ve got an inconspicuous shuttle waiting planetside with the IDs and credits I promised him?”

Seth still stared at Riddick as if he’d just realized that they were indeed freeing a criminal, a killer, but nodded emphatically.

Riddick just grunted, not wanting to let Seth off the hook too easily, and made his way to find the crew showers.

*

  
_Six months later, Pre’Ert Star System_  


They’d dropped the container off at its designated recycling factory on heavily guarded Hubble Bay Planet, while Ryan and Riddick stowed away in a small compartment that had been fitted to hide life signatures from the scanners. The warning sign for nuclear materials explained both the heavy lead shielding and kept any nosey guard from breaking it open.

Then the three of them had taken the shuttle to the planet’s only moon for “maintenance”, after Seth had wreaked havoc on the automated docking controls, rendering it inoperable for its daily trash-collecting duty. They’d landed safely on the free moon, where Riddick took delivery of his own shuttle, ID and money, and left the star system of Hubble Bay as fast as possible.

He researched planets, and while knowing that the money the two boys had been able to provide would last him for a year even back on Old Earth, he’d settled on a little wild planet on the outskirts of the known universe. The climate was rather tropical, heavy rain showers and storms afflicting it regularly, but the weather was Riddick’s least concern. He found himself a spacious cave to retreat into for those times, with a small spring of crystal clear water within walking distance. Only a couple of klicks down it fed a waterhole, which the local grazing creatures liked to visit. As far as voluntary exiles went, it was perfect. Certainly a nice change of scenery compared to the oppressing walls of Hubble Bay or a shuttle.

Most of all, though, Riddick enjoyed the distinct lack of human interference.

Which is why he was particularly miffed when a bullet whizzed past him while he deboned his rodent-like dinner. He turned his rock-table into a rock-shield, and easily spotted Johns at the edge of the clearing, ready to dive behind a tree should Riddick counter the fire.

“Next week it would have been eight months since we’ve last seen each other. Did you miss me, or did you just want to thank me for my parting gift personally?” Riddick yelled over the distance. He had no weapons other than his beloved knives, wickedly bent, razor-sharp, handle wrapped in leather to fit smoothly into his palms. He’d made them himself out of ordinary blades, with great patience and care, but they just didn’t have the reach of a bullet.

Johns stiffened, and shot again just to voice his displeasure at being reminded. “Your bounty has tripled, Riddick,” he yelled back.

That at least explained why he’d gone to such lengths at tracking Riddick down, risking months in cryo to even reach the Pre’Ert system.

“I was hoping you’d say that,” Riddick said mostly to himself. Dusk was falling quickly, forcing Johns into action. Night on Pre’Ert Four was far from the utter darkness he’d last seen in the container, or Hubble Bay’s Level 100. One of the three moons was always visible, as well as thousands of stars, providing Riddick with the perfect advantage as a nocturnal predator.

His shuttle was still ready for takeoff, hidden away in a larger cavity high up in the same mountain Riddick’s cave was in. He just had to get Johns out of the way, at least for a while so he could climb the rockface without being target practice.

Scenarios for their upcoming battle already playing through his mind, Riddick watched the sun sink. He pulled off his goggles, and smirked when he saw that Johns had come prepared, strapping on a pair of night-vision glasses.

_May the best man win_ , he thought with no doubt in his mind who that would be. He’d lost count how many times they’d switched roles in their private game of cat and mouse, but it was still Riddick who had the flashing eyes and sharp claws.

~ end

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for giving this story a chance. It has grown and evolved with me over six years, so it holds a special place in my heart. These winter holidays I'd again promised myself to work on it, but frankly, I hadn't thought it ever would be completed. I kind of surprised myself when I realized that I'd just written the ending.
> 
> Still, I couldn't have done it without [amcw177](http://archiveofourown.org/users/amcw177/), who was a tremendous help in what she refers to as The Onion Situation. I'd thought up this prison with its drastic security measures, and suddenly found myself at a dead end trying to figure out how Riddick would escape from it. So when I say that the story wouldn't exist without her, I mean that quite literally. Thanks girl!
> 
> It is also actually canon that Riddick's blade broke in Johns' body, and caused him to become a morphine addict:  
> The website's "file" on Johns mentions a large scar next to his spine from a previous run-in with Riddick. An early version of the script also had Johns explain:
>
>> JOHNS  
> Owens was already dead. His brain just  
> hadn't caught on to that fact.
>> 
>> FRY  
> Anything else we should know about you,  
> Johns? Christ, here I am lettin' you play  
> games with our lives when --
>> 
>> _He catches her hands -- and moves them around his body, forcing_  
>  _her into an embrace. We understand why when we see a CLOSEUP_  
>  _of her hands: They find a jagged purple scar beside his spine._
>> 
>> JOHNS  
>  My first run-in with Riddick. Went for  
> the sweet-spot and missed. They had to  
> leave a piece of the shiv in there. I can  
> feel it, sometimes, pressing against the  
> cord.  
> (giving her hands back)  
> So maybe the care and feeding of my  
> nerve-endings is my business.
>> 
>> FRY  
> You coulda helped. And you didn't.  
> 


End file.
